The combination of education and religion created a powerful tool of indoctrination and were used surreptitiously to create a worldview of white supremacy and to perpetuate a sense of low self-esteem and low self-worth in Africans .
Since education conferred the badge of superiority to the learner and since the learner was invariably young the advent of Christianity and education began to create a new social structure that eroded the timehonored age-group hierarchical order .
Respect was now bestowed to those that exhibited a mastery of the ways of the colonizer and one ’ s measure of achievement was defined by how well one would cope with the rigors of the trappings of the new way of life .
What brought knowledge did not necessarily also bring wisdom and we wonder why the new converts did not find it disturbing on how the Christian tenet of loving your neighbor as yourself ended with the African as a segregated third-class citizen in his own country .
They did not question why their fathers were referred to as ‘ boys ’ even by the European boys and why their rulers were now called chiefs , a rank equivalent to the lowest rank of the colonial administrations structure .
Or why the well-known fable of the camel asking to shelter its head in a tent and ending up taking the whole tent did not raise alarm bells in their heads about the visitor who they had welcomed but was now taking over their homes and land .
Since they could now read , why didn ’ t they read the bible for themselves rather than waiting for the carefully curated content that was shared every Sunday and that painted a picture that suited the newcomer . For example , wasn ’ t it convenient to hear that one ought to give unto Caesar what is Caesar ’ s when the person making the statement is Caesar ; for providing pax Britannica which they did not need nor had asked for .
Why didn ’ t they wonder why America , whose democracy they were copying , had such a loathing for any intermingling of religion and state yet they were once a British colony . Might they have learnt that religion was just a tool for control not salvation .
Why is it that the country that imported Christianity to us has such a dwindling church attendance that many churches have been sold off and turned into taverns and ale houses . Did Jesus migrate from England .
Could it be that the imported religion was never actually interested in spiritual matters since it did not teach love for mankind
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The combination of education and religion created a powerful tool of indoctrination and were used surreptitiously to create a worldview of white supremacy and to perpetuate a sense of low self-esteem and low self-worth in Africans .
or practice it but was instead a tool for mesmerizing and manipulating the masses for political ends .
Could it be the reason why the clergy is full of politicians wearing a collar since Christianity did not teach integrity but duplicity and it ’ s the real reason that today they sell anointing in the same way the catholic church sold indulgences to the rich .
It is not that Kenyans were a naïve group of people that did to realize that religion was being used to control them , they did . What they chose to do was to copy the missionary and perpetuate the use of religion as a tool of control and business .
That is why churches today find it difficult to take the moral high ground and protect the people from charlatans since they are in bed with corrupt politicians whom they sanitize by presenting as ordained by God .
Why didn ’ t the African clergy opt to synthesize the new religion with their traditional beliefs of community to domesticate the religion and create a powerful tool for harnessing the cooperation of the masses for national development ?
Do we still have men and women of conscience in Kenya who are able to stand in the agora and proclaim a religion that serves the people and not one that manipulates them ? One that shepherds them to prosperity based on an honest value addition to society ?
The education system was designed to maintain the British hegemony , to provide a constant supply of skilled labor to further supplement the imperial coffers . Kenyans , to their credit , were smart enough to recognize that the education system wasn ’ t working .
But why did Kenya choose to discard a dysfunctional system and replace it with an incomplete one ? The new system was more of a political statement rather than a rigorously thought-out curriculum to spur and sustain development .
The current system has had so many revisions that it bears no resemblance to the original prototype that was intended to address all the shortcomings of the anomalous British system that served the colonial interests .
If independence means the freedom to make laws and decisions without being governed or controlled by another country or organization then we have to be very careful when defining what Kenya actually achieved at independence .
There is a romantic notion that Kenya attained its independence after a hardfought engagement with the British forces which were actually African corps under the command of British officers . The reality is that Kenyans were fighting Kenyans for independence .
The infamous or famous Mau Mau upraising , depending on who was reporting , which took place in central Kenya did not spark a national rebellion which is testimony of how fractured the Kenyan community was .
Yet the demands of the Mau Mau were identical to those of many communities in Kenya . They were agitating for basic rights like the return of alienated lands , better wages , access to education and inclusion in the political process that excluded Africans .
Why did the uprising fail to garner national support even though it lasted for eight years ? Is this an example of how effective the divide and rule strategy worked or is it just that Kenya as a country was actually a fiction created on a European table .
As a result , those that ascended to political power at independence were not the ones that fought for independence and the interlopers that assumed power were selected representatives of the ostensibly departing colonizers .
Kenya has never been a cohesive political entity because the people that identify Kenya as home did not coalesce into a political unit by natural selection which is
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